Concrete plans for the future

Deb Fisher designs and builds concrete countertops. She recently moved her business into the basement of Clark & Company Home Furnishings at First and Broadway streets. Clark & Company owners Matthew Clark and Brian Olson envision a complete home design and furnishing operation.

“We are expecting to have most of this up and running by the first of the year,” said Matthew Clark, a partner with Brian Olson in Clark & Company, in the brick building at the northeast corner of First and Broadway.

Clark and Olson opened their business in May 2008, just before the economy spiraled into recession.

Depite the sluggish economy, Clark said sales exceeded his initial expectations and have held up better than expected.

“Like most businesses in the area, sales have been flat, but it didn’t really drop off, like it has in some other areas,” he said.

Clark said the business has been undergoing changes ever since it opened.

He’s changed the styles of furniture to include a more eclectic mix of rustic, leather and heavy wood pieces. Many of the home decor items in the store are original works by local artists, and he recently teamed up with Deb Fisher, who is bringing her Sagebrush Studio Design business, which builds concrete countertops, to the basement of Clark & Company.

Fisher was a dental hygienist in California before she and her husband moved to Baker City about five years ago and started building a home here.

Fisher said she had marveled at some of the concrete coutertops in California homes and decided that’s what she wanted in her home in Baker City. But instead of hiring the work done, she took classes a couple of years ago from a concrete countertop guru named Buddy Rhodes in San Francisco.

“I was the only woman in the class,” Fisher said. “The rest were builders who wanted to get into the concrete countertops.” 

She had so much fun building her own countertop that she decided to scrap her dental hygiene career and start her own business. Besides countertops, she does tile work and Saux paint finishes.

For about the first year she worked from home, but after a stretch answering the phone and minding the store for Clark during the summer, Fisher suggested to him that she move her business into the basement of the furniture store.

Fisher said she figured her business meshed with Clark’s  concept of combining a variety of home design and decor businesses in the same building with the furniture store.

Now, there’s a wooden sink cabinet with a concrete countertop and tile on display on the main floor of Clark & Company.

When she’s not helping out by answering the phone or waiting on customers on the main floor, Fisher keeps busy in the basement — which she calls a dungeon — concocting a special blend of countertop cement she buys in 50-pound bags from Rhodes.

She mixes the cement in a drum, adding aggregate and in some cases a bit of fiberglass with different colors, such as a cobalt blue mix for a countertop she poured into forms Thursday for a kitchen remodeling project in Baker City.

She uses all sorts of techniques to put artistic touches on her countertops, such as laying down materials that will laave small holes in the finish, which she fills with a second layer of colored material to create a marbled appearance.

“Concrete is great to work with because there’s so many things you can do with it,” Fisher said, such as inlaying tile pieces to match a wall, floor or shower.

She’s made concrete countertops in a variety of colors, some with ground up champagne bottles for a sparkly look, and others with souvenirs, photographs or other memorabilia cast in the finish layer.

One of her favorites is a polished gray concrete with inlaid tile and shiny varnish finish.

As for the move into Clark & Company’s basement, Fisher said, “It’s cool being here in the store with the guys. I help them out answering the phone and things when they’re out, and they help me out when I need to move or transport a countertop weighing 200 pounds or more.”

As for the pros and cons of starting a new business during a recession, Fisher said she figured if she can survive the worst recession since the 1930s, then she has a pretty good chance of growing when the economy turns around.

Clark, too, is optimistic about the future.

“As we move forward with the furniture store and the design center, we are fine- tuning things based on the Eastern Oregon lifestyle,” he said. “When you come into a town and participate, people here embrace you. I feel kind of like an adopted son.”

Clark said he’s seeing signs that the local economy is picking up.

He said he came up with the design center concept because he saw a need for a single place where people can put together a room, home or office design, matching furniture colors and styles with paint and wall finishes, countertops, floor coverings and eventually window coverings.

“Molly Wilson is setting up a new studio for her interior design business upstairs,” Clark said. “Now that her kids are going off to college, she is going back to interior design full time.”

Glen and Cledith VandenBos are also planning to set up a paint business in the Clark and Company building, which the couple own.

“Matthew approached us. He wanted us to move our paint business over there after the first of the year, when we close Eagle Valley Building Supply,” Cledith VandenBos said. “They have done great with the furniture store, but Matthew really wants to crate a complete design center.

“Because of the tough economic times, with things the way they are, you have to do a little more,” she said. “You have to get creative.”

Cledith said she and Glen are closing Eagle Valley Building Supply due in part to the economic downturn.

Moving the paint shop portion of the business into the Clark & Company building fits in with the couple’s plans to scale back and do something less time-consuming so they can travel and live a semi-retired lifestyle.

“We are changing paint lines and the whole works,” Cledith VandenBos said.